


Something Always Brings Me Back To You

by mos



Category: The 100 (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-20 20:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 17,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mos/pseuds/mos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Abby and Marcus. This is a series of snippets from their lives that forms their story, with alternating points of view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tree Tender

Abby craned her neck, trying to see past the worshippers gathered in the church room. Vera was still talking about salvation and Earth, and so long as she was talking, Marcus would be up there with her, by the tree. The services closed when Marcus, as the tender of the tree, watered it, but that largely depended on how long Vera's speech went on for. Impatiently Abby waited, then wandered back to the little table at the back of the room to read over her Earth History speech notes again.

"You have a crush on him," someone giggled in her ear.

Diana Sydney, at seventeen, was three years older than both Abby and Marcus, but a great deal more immature, or so Abby thought. She was only here because her boyfriend regularly attended services.

"I do not!" Abby retorted hotly. "Marcus is my friend."

Her best friend, in fact, and they had been best friends since they were seven and participated in the Unity Day pageant together. Abby had carried the Canadian Flag and Marcus had carried the Brazilian one, and they'd been inseparable ever since.

The older girl just laughed. "Yeah, a _boy_ friend."

"Go away." Abby had never really liked Diana, who was loud and went around telling everyone that her mother practically owned Factory Station. Like anyone cared who owned Factory Station, or any other station for that matter.

Diana made kissing noises as she danced off.

"Trash!" Abby called after her. A few heads near the back of the crowd turned to look at her, and she ducked her head. You were not supposed to call people names during church services, but then you were not supposed to tease people, either, and Diana clearly didn't care about that.

Abby really hated Diana, who thought she was so great. She didn't understand why Diana cared so much about other peoples' business. Maybe she was jealous. So far as Abby knew, Diana didn't have a best friend.

With a sigh, Abby got up again, and this time saw that the services were finally coming to a close. She smiled as she caught a glimpse through the crowd of Marcus watering the tree, then bounced on her feet while she waited for everyone to disperse. When they were mostly gone, he spotted her and wandered over.

"Been waiting long?" he asked.

"Maybe ten minutes," she replied. She made a face. "Diana was here."

"Well... salvation only comes after great suffering," Marcus replied, with a shrug. He was always saying things like that, inserting random religious teachings into his words, and she was pretty sure that he didn't know that he did it.

"You have to help me with my Earth History," she told him, grabbing him by the arm and dragging him over to one of the tables at the back of the room, where she'd already laid out her notes.

"Do I really have to?" he complained, though he took the sheet she handed him anyway, scanning the words she'd written there.

"Well?" she asked.

"Just a minute."

She watched his eyes dart back and forth over her notes, eagerly waiting for him to finish. She was sure that her oral report was perfect, but before she started rehearsing her speech, she wanted to make sure, and Marcus was an ace at Earth History because of his mother, who as leader of the church knew a great deal about Earth.

Marcus pointed to one of the notes near the bottom. "This is incorrect. Well, not incorrect, but you either have to focus on one culture and be specific, or be general."

She grabbed the sheet away, reading over what she'd written there about weddings. "It has to be general."

"Then you should stick with saying that weddings were elaborate gatherings where everyone dressed up. Nix the point about the white dresses, because not all cultures wore them."

"But it was widespread," she argued. Besides, she liked the idea of white dresses. She had only ever owned one dress, and she certainly had never owned anything white. There was no longer any white clothing on the Ark because it had all been used and repaired and handed down so many times.

"Doesn't matter," Marcus replied, sitting back and crossing his arms.

"Fine." She set the paper aside, her mind still on Earth weddings.

"That's pretty amazing, though, right? That they actually celebrated their love. All the symbolism, and the families coming together. Makes registering with the records department and having a small evening gathering seem a little boring, doesn't it?"

"It would be pointless to consume unnecessary resources," Marcus replied, completely logically. Sometimes his logic infuriated her, and this time was no different.

"Oh, come on," she complained. "Just play along."

"You're romanticizing life on Earth."

"Of course I am. How could we not, living in space? I for one would like even one small thing to make my wedding day special. Maybe not a white dress, but a dress. Not a fancy one, but a different one."

"Girls," he snorted. She kicked him under the table, even more determined now to force him to play along.

"Play along! What would you wear to your wedding?"

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever clothing I was issued at the time?"

"Marcus, you're no fun."

"Who says I'm going to get married anyway?"

It was her turn to roll her eyes. He was impossible, but that was what she loved about him.

"Of course you're going to get married," she told him. She would see to that, because he was her best friend, and of course he was going to marry her. She'd never tell him that, though. Not until he kissed her, anyway, and she was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, which was just as well. They were only fourteen, after all, and had plenty of time. Abby had the whole thing planned out in her mind, and if there was anything she was good at, it was making things happen.

And if by some small chance Marcus was right and he didn't marry, she would assume it was because she wasn't there. And she would always be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is from the song Gravity by Sara Bareilles, which I listened to a lot while writing this. When I first saw Abby and Marcus on the show, I thought it was interesting how they behaved around each other. Their relationship is so antagonistic and yet she never holds any of it against him. Naturally this led me to believe there was some kind of past bond between them, because why else would she forgive him so easily? And that she never really let go of the person he used to be. So here we are.


	2. Moonshine

"I have an idea," Abby said, when Marcus opened his door at her knock. He bit back a groan, wondering what harebrained plan she'd gotten in her head this time. No doubt he'd be dragged along with it kicking and screaming, because when Abby wanted something, she refused to stop until she got it. 

When she pulled a small bottle of moonshine out of her jacket pocket, eyes gleaming with mischief, he knew he was in serious trouble.

"Abby, no," he said, glad at least that his mother wasn't home yet. She would have a fit to see that stuff in her quarters. "Where did you get that?"

"I found it," she replied, with a shrug. 

He did not believe for one second that she'd found an entire bottle of moonshine somewhere on the Ark. Wherever she'd gotten it from, though, the less he knew was probably the better.

"I'm not drinking it," he said.

"Yes you are," she replied happily, grabbing him by the arm and hauling him toward the door. "I want to get drunk just once."

"Why?" He did not want to get drunk, but clearly he had no choice.

"Because I want to be a doctor and to do that I'm going to have to study, and before I start studying, I want to get drunk. Just once, that's all."

Rolling his eyes, he followed her down the corridors, down into one of the wings where there was a little nook off the hallway with a viewing window. There they sat side by side on the floor and she opened the little bottle and sniffed it. Making a face, she handed it over to him.

"What, I get to go first?" he asked. It figured. Taking a sniff, he wrinkled his nose. It smelled like it would taste awful, but he took a drink anyway.

It did taste awful, and it burned his throat. Coughing, he shoved the bottle back at her. She grinned and took a huge swallow, but all her bravado crumbled as she descended into a coughing fit as well.

"That's awful," she croaked. "How do people drink enough of that to get drunk?"

"I think you just have to keep going," he replied. And so they did, until the little bottle was empty, and after that they sat. He was pretty sure that he wasn't drunk until they stood up and he felt himself waver a little. She saw and started laughing hysterically.

She was definitely drunk.

"We have to walk it off," she said, and so they started down the corridor, trying to look normal. For whatever reason, though, every time someone passed by, they broke down into laughter, and that was when he knew that he was definitely drunk.

"Are you kids okay?" someone asked, during one of their laughing fits. Instead of responding, Abby grabbed his hand and started running, and he ran with her, down one corridor and another and another. He was pretty sure that she had no idea where she was going, and was definitely sure when she suddenly screeched to a halt.

"This is a restricted area!" she hissed, whirling around. 

"What?" His mind was fuzzy, and he probably should have cared, but couldn't find it in himself to do more than laugh about it.

She smacked his arm. "Stop laughing! I can't become a doctor if we get thrown in the skybox!"

For whatever reason, he found that hilarious. "You and your plans-"

"We need to get out of here!"

There was nowhere to go, though, because footsteps were coming down the corridor, and any minute now the guards would come around the corner and ask them what the hell they were doing in a restricted area. They'd probably already been seen on the security cameras.

"Kiss me," she ordered.

"What?"

"Oh my god, Marcus, just kiss me!"

"I've never-"

She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him against her, backing them both against the wall. Then her lips were on his, and it was sloppy and weird, because neither of them had kissed anyone before, and neither knew what they were doing. But if they were trying to be convincing for the guards, he thought he should try and make it look real, so he put his hands in her hair. Following his lead, she linked hers around his neck.

And then suddenly it was nice. Everything clicked, and everything slowed, and her lips were soft and fit perfectly with his, and he could taste the moonshine on them. It felt perfectly natural for one of his hands to settle on her waist, and when it landed there she let out a little sigh with her breath, and it occurred to him that this was what he'd thought being drunk would really feel like-

"You there! This is a restricted area!"

Someone grabbed his arm and wrenched him away from her. The guards, two of them, had their batons pointed at them, and Abby had her hands stupidly stuck in the air. He barely managed to swallow a laugh at the sight of it.

"But this is section four," she said innocently.

"This is section six," one of the guards replied. 

"I'm sorry!" Abby's eyes were wide, and she genuinely looked like she was about to cry. Marcus followed her lead and tried to look scared as well. At least if they were thrown in the skybox, they'd have each other. They were fifteen, so it would be three years until their reviews.

"Consider this a warning," the guard said. He jerked his head toward the corridor behind him. "If you're caught in this area again, you'll be charged. Understood?"

Abby nodded frantically, then grabbed Marcus's hand and raced off. When they were safely back in an unrestricted area, they both collapsed against the wall and started laughing.

"Do you think they knew we were drunk?" she asked. Her eyes were glistening with tears from her laughter. 

"They would have if I'd spoken," he replied. "It's a good thing you're a complete nerd even when you're wasted."

"I am not!"

"You are so."

"Come on. We should get home. Nice kissing, by the way."

They started off down the corridor again. "You think so?" he asked. "I had no idea what I was doing."

"I think you're supposed to slip me the tongue," she said.

He glanced at her to see if she was serious, but she was grinning at him. He tried to kick at her foot, but she bounced away, laughing.

"It's not going to be weird, is it?" he asked. They were friends, after all. Not that he hadn't thought about it turning romantic, but he'd never thought about it seriously.

"Of course not," she replied dismissively. "Think of the bright side, though. I'll always compare all future kisses to yours."


	3. Floating

Another test aced. Abby was pleased with herself, and even more pleased that Dr. King had consented to let her lurk in medical. It was just to sit back and observe, but she had high hopes that he'd at least teach her how to stitch or something. And even if he didn't, she was sure that he'd be more than willing to take her on as an apprentice later on, in two years when she took the exams.

"Mom?" she called. Her mother had been sleeping a lot lately, and she wasn't sure she should wake her, but she was so excited about her news.

"Come here, Abigail," came her father's voice from the next room. Something cool slid down Abby's spine.

Her parents were sitting there side by side on the couch, looking serious. Next to her father, her mother looked frail, and Abby had wondered when she'd started looking like that. The cool feeling was quickly turning to dread that settled in the pit of her stomach.

"What's going on?" Abby asked.

Her mother patted the couch next to her. "Have a seat, Abigail."

She didn't want to have a seat. She wanted to run from the room and not come back. Something was coming, something she wasn't going to like, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. Numbly, she sat, heart hammering. Her father gave her a sad smile, while her mother took her hand.

"Baby, I'm sick," she said.

Abby numbly registered her mother's next words. She'd been sick for months. That explained the sleeping and the hollows beneath her eyes. There was no treatment for chronic illnesses that required heavy consumption of resources, but because her skills as an engineer were valuable, she'd been allowed to live for so long as she didn't need extra resources. Abby remembered her mother sleeping all week, and the whispers behind her back. Her mother was dying.

"Abby, listen to me," she said gently, cupping Abby's face in her hands. "I'm in pain, sweetheart, and it's only going to get worse. They gave me time but I can't work anymore."

"Mom, no!" Abby cried, all at once wanting to slap her mother away and hug her and never let go. "You can't! No!"

"Abby, this is my choice," her mother said firmly. "Look at me. I don't want to let you go, baby, but I also don't want you to see me die in pain. This is better for all of us."

Abby flung herself at her mother and broke down.

There was a process to go through to be accepted for voluntary euthanasia, and Abby's mother had been approved that morning. She'd be ejected from an airlock chamber on the execution bay tomorrow at noon. Floated. Killed. 

Dead.

She cried in her mother's arms, and slept in them that night. She didn't even tell her about the test she'd aced, or the news about Dr. King letting her hang out in medical. It didn't matter now. All that mattered was spending every last second of time with her mom.

Time soon ran out, though, as it always did.

Her mother smiled sadly at her from the airlock chamber at noon the next day. Reaching up, she passed her hands over her eyes, and Abby nodded and closed hers, just like she'd promised. Her father held tightly to her hand, and there was a beep and a hiss, and when she opened her eyes again, her mother was gone. 

She turned and ran.

Marcus was the one to find her, of course. She was crying so hard that her head hurt and her eyes felt swollen and her nose felt raw from all the snot she'd been wiping away. She knew she probably looked awful, but she couldn't stop, and she had wrapped her arms around herself because it hurt so bad that she thought the pain was going to burst from her body.

"Abby," Marcus said, sitting down beside her. "I'm sorry."

Wordlessly, she threw herself into his arms and sobbed into his shoulder while he held her. They'd never been through this. Marcus's father had done the voluntary euthanasia thing as well, but that was back when they allowed people to commit suicide by Earth. Marcus had been three then, and he had no memory of his father, and no reason why because his mother never talked about it. If that hurt him, he'd never said, and as he held her, she cried for the both of them. 

"Don't ever leave me," she told him, awhile later. His shirt was wet beneath her cheek from her tears, his arms warm where they were locked around her.

"Never," he said.


	4. Unity Day

"Wait. Come here."

Marcus rolled his eyes, but spun around and walked back to her. He knew exactly what she was about, too, and gave her an exasperated look as she reached up and ran her hands through his hair, messing it all up and looking quite pleased to be doing so. He pretended to hate it, but in reality he liked the feeling of her fingers in his hair, and he enjoyed watching her while she did it.

"There," she pronounced. "Now you're sexy."

"What if I don't want to be sexy?"

"Everyone wants to be sexy," she said dismissively. "Now come on."

"Are you really going to make me do this?" he asked, as he followed her down the hallway to the common room. She'd been excited about the Unity Day dance for weeks. He was considerably less so.

"Yes," she threw over her shoulder. "You're going to talk to Liz whether you like it or not."

When Abby got an idea in her head, there was no talking her out of it. Liz had a crush on him, and Abby had found this out through Callie, who had heard it from Liz herself. That was the thing about girls that Marcus hated. Whether they liked you or hated you, they made sure everyone single one of them knew it. 

Marcus was not particularly interested in Liz. In fact, of late he had found his gaze drifting to his best friend instead, which he had noted to himself but beyond that, had chosen to ignore. They were seventeen and Abby was beautiful, and all the boys looked at her. There was nothing more to it than that.

Inside the room where the dance was being held, Abby craned her neck, rising to her tiptoes as she scanned the room. Marcus was taller than her now, and could plainly see that Liz was not present. He knew Abby wouldn't give up that easily, though.

"Callie!" Abby waved at her friend, who made her way over. "Have you seen Liz?"

"She's in lockup," Callie replied. Callie was less serious than Abby, but much quieter. She and Marcus never had much to say to each other, the only thing they had in common being Abby's friendship.

"What? What happened?"

"Her mom stole a pair of boots from the redistribution centre and Liz punched a guard in the face when they came to arrest her. And of course got herself arrested as well."

The mood suddenly turned serious. Liz's mother would be executed, and Liz herself would be in the skybox until she turned eighteen.

"She gets a review, though," Abby said. Even with a frown on her face, Abby looked beautiful. She wasn't happy that he matchmaking plans had been foiled, he could see, but he was pleased that he no longer had to be the subject of one of her goals. She was ruthless about obtaining her goals, which was something he both admired about her and found infuriating.

"Her parents are drunks and she has no useful skills," Callie said. "They'll float her."

"Maybe not."

Callie just shrugged. 

Abby turned to him, the frown still on her face. He couldn't help a smile. In reply, her eyes narrowed just a little, and then she reached up and messed up his hair some more.

"Stop that," he said, catching her wrist.

"No," she said, tugging it from his grasp. As the music started up, he thought about grabbing it again, about tugging her to the centre of the room and using dancing as an excuse to hold onto her. Instead he stayed put and pretended that he wouldn't kick himself for it later.

"Space Jam?" Abby snorted. "Who chose this music? It's ancient."

"Jake Griffin," Callie replied. 

Jake Griffin was nineteen, and all the girls were half in love with him. While he didn't think Abby and Callie were included in that group, he wasn't entirely sure, because sometimes they whispered and cast glances in Jake's direction when he was nearby. Marcus was not much interested in their girly discussions, but he thought that Callie probably had a thing for Jake and Abby was probably planning on matchmaking, because it was the only thing that made sense. Of one thing he was certain, and that was that Abby would never go for the likes of Jake Griffin, who never took life seriously.

"Speak of the devil," Abby said. Jake was making his way through the dancers toward them, his eyes on Abby.

"Abby," Jake said, circling around her and making a show of checking her out. "Abby, are those space pants, because your ass is out of this world."

Abby giggled. 

Abby never giggled. Something about the sound and the adoring way she was looking at Jake irritated Marcus. Even Callie was making a face, and she caught Marcus's eye and rolled her eyes. For the first time, doubt crept into his mind. Callie was clearly not interested in Jake, and Abby was giggling.

"Come and dance with me," Jake said, and before Abby could reply he pulled her away. 

"And there they go," Callie said dryly. "So it begins."

Marcus knew he was frowning, but couldn't help it. "Abby doesn't like him."

Callie shot him an incredulous look. "Really? Wow, boys are dumb."

Abby had a thing for Jake. Marcus couldn't believe it. Why had she never said a word to him about it?

"Are you going to ask me to dance, or not?" Callie asked impatiently, arms crossed. She raised her eyebrows at him in question.

"Not," he replied. She shrugged and disappeared, and he was left with the other wallflowers, irritated with himself and with the whole situation. Abby's ploy to set him up with Liz had clearly been orchestrated in order to give her the evening with Jake. Why she thought that he couldn't function without her was beyond him, and it annoyed him to think about.

Except she was probably right, because there she was, off with Jake, and here he was, standing around like an idiot. Like he couldn't find anything better to do than follow her around. He wasn't going to dance, though, because he hated dancing, and so he wandered over to the window to look out at Earth.

That was the sort of thing Marcus liked doing. Observing and contemplating.

After two dances, Abby found him. 

"Why aren't you dancing?" she asked. Her eyes looked pretty with a happy sparkle in them. "I'm sorry about Liz."

"Who cares about Liz?" he shot back, annoyed with her. "You're falling for that? Surfer boy who actually uses antique pickup lines seriously?"

Abby crossed her arms, the sparkle in her eyes suddenly gone. "He was being funny."

"He's an idiot."

"Actually, he's not. He was recruited by engineering."

"Well good for him." He turned back to the window. Of course Jake Griffin was smart on top of being likeable and handsome. He was everything Marcus was not.

"It is good for him," Abby argued. "And I like him, so who cares what you think?"

He turned back to her, knowing that arguing with her once her mind was made up was pointless, but deciding to do it anyway. "You're better than this. Abby, you're intelligent and dedicated and ambitious. And he's... he puts his hair in his eyes on purpose."

Abby's shoulders stiffened. "So? Maybe I am all of those things, Marcus, but maybe I need someone like him. Someone who can make me smile. Not someone so serious."

Was she talking about him? She couldn't be, because she didn't think of him that way. "There's nothing wrong with serious," he said.

"Never said there was," she snapped. "But I'm going to be a doctor, and at the end of the day maybe it's better to have someone there who isn't so intense."

He didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but he did know that serious and intense were both words she had used to describe him in the past.

"I'm done arguing with you," he told her. "Go have fun, Abby. I'm going to study."

And with that, he left, and he could feel her eyes on his back as he left the room.


	5. The Guard

"Marcus!" Abby pounded on his door with determined enthusiasm, shoving away that little niggling thought in the back of her mind that said that she hadn't seen Marcus in twelve and a half days, a situation that wasn't terribly alarming, as they had been drifting apart over the last few months, but bothered her nonetheless.

Although she'd never admit it to herself, not really. She would also never admit that despite their drifting, the first person who had popped into her mind when she'd gotten the news was him, and the fact that she'd raced off to find him immediately had nothing to do with anything other than her own excitement.

When the door opened, the niggling thoughts vanished at the sight of Marcus, her quiet, thoughtful Marcus... who was in a cadet's uniform.

And she was aghast. Suddenly it made sense, the way Jake had come knocking with news that she hadn't heard because she'd been so preoccupied with studying for the exams that she'd sent him away. And the way Callie had caught her eye across the mess hall, and how her father had been strangely quiet these last few days. They'd all known, and they'd also known how she would react.

She must have been gaping, because Marcus raised his eyebrows at her in question.

She could have ignored it and told him her good news. She could have said anything. She could have told him congratulations and pretended happiness for him, or she could have told him that the uniform looked good on him and she wished him the best or that she thought he'd make a great guardsman.

"You can't join the guard, Marcus," she said instead.

Just like that, his expression closed. "I wouldn't have expected _you_ to say that," he replied.

She could already feel him slipping away from her, and maybe it had already been happening and that was why she'd run to his door first. "I didn't mean it like that. What about the church?"

"The fact that you just asked me that confirms that you did mean it like that," he said. "I left the church."

She hadn't expected that to hurt the way it did. The best part about Marcus was his faith, and the way he always knew just the right thing to say, like when they'd floated her mother and he'd found her broken and losing it and he'd told her that her mother's spirit was free now, and that she should think of her as an entity walking in a quiet forest on the ground. Like when they were nine and she'd cut her arm and they had to stitch it up without drugs to freeze it because the injury was considered minor. He'd sat by her side and distracted her from the pain by telling her stories about the old world on the ground and how suffering had to be endured in order to find salvation.

"I meant that it's not you," she said.

"And what do you know about me?"

"We've been friends since we were seven, Marcus. If this is about getting back at all those stupid kids who called you a boring little church boy-"

"This is about not wasting my time," he cut in. "You and I, and everyone here has the same goal: to live in order for our species to survive. I am making the best that I can of my life. You were the one that told me I would make a good leader."

"I didn't mean like this," she snapped.

"Why not?"

"You're good at so many things, Marcus," she told him, and was annoyed that a note of pleading had entered her voice. "You have such a talent for observing things objectively, and you're better at math than I am, and you aced Earth History and Earth Skills-"

"Earth Skills?" he interrupted. "What use are Earth Skills when we're stuck in space?"

"We need to keep primitive survival knowledge for the generation that will return to Earth," she argued. "You could be a teacher, Marcus."

"I'd make a terrible teacher."

"You wouldn't! You're so good at talking to the younger kids, at listening to them and you're so patient-"

"Shut up, Abby."

She was completely taken aback. She hadn't realized how far they'd drifted apart, that they'd become acquaintances since she'd started dating Jake. Had she neglected their friendship? Had she done something to offend him? He was her best friend, and this wasn't the way their story was supposed to go. He was going to be there like he always had, right by her side to back her up and keep her secrets. He was her rock.

Except he was annoyed with her now, and maybe he had been for a long time. "If you came here to criticize me like everyone else, you can leave."

"I came here to tell you that I've been accepted as a medical apprentice," she replied bitterly. "What did I do? Why are you being like this?"

"Because I have to be," he replied. "You didn't do anything."

He shut the door between them, and it didn't open again until they crashed to the ground together twenty-odd years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahoy, readers! Just a little note that will hopefully stick to the bottom of this chapter (had some trouble with my last note wandering). Just wanted to say that there's going to be some fairly large time jumps in the next couple chapters until we hit the story's canon, but hopefully it will all make sense. I tried to mark events that I thought would be/were significant to their relationship. Enjoy!


	6. Wedding Day

The worst thing Marcus had ever done was to shut Abby out. It had been easy to keep away from her, to not be in the mess hall at the same time as her because he knew exactly when she'd be there. He'd thrown himself into his guard training and made new friends, and had kept to the opposite side of any room they ended up in together.

He knew he'd hurt her, and he did hate himself for it. He'd seen the hurt glances she'd given him, but eventually those had stopped. With the end of their friendship had come dividing lines amongst their mutual friends, with most of them ending up on her side. The few who had stayed with him had never asked what had happened, and it was just as well, because he wasn't going to tell them.

The truth was that he had deliberately ended their friendship not because he'd been in love with Abby, but because the potential had been there. He'd cared about her, of course, but he'd find his eyes focusing on her lips as she spoke, and sometimes his thoughts would drift to imagining what it would be like to kiss them again, and what making love to her would feel like. And the truth was, it would have been amazing, and that was the problem. She'd never given a hint of feeling the same, and after he'd seen how Jake made her smile, he'd realized that she was right.

He was too serious. Too intense. So was she. Love between them would have been fire. It would have consumed them and neither of them could have made the most out of their lives while clinging to each other.

Jake was good for her. He called her _baby_ and made her smile. Abby needed that, needed someone who could derail her single-mindedness with a joke and lighten her heart. And as much as it hurt to lose his friend, he'd been determined not to be the one following her around like a lovesick puppy.

So he'd put a stop to it before it even happened.

And now here he was at Abby and Jake's wedding celebration.

A year back, Marcus had helped arrest a man from Factory Station who had been caught by Jake trying to sabotage the environmental systems on the Go Sci Ring. He'd known that Jake was well-liked, and for the first time, had been able to see why. Jake had been gifted with the ability to make everyone around him feel comfortable, and Marcus could see that he was passionate about his work as well. By the end of the debacle, he had to admit that Jake was a good man, and decided that he liked him. They even chatted on occasion.

He just didn't like Jake with Abby, was all. But Abby was happy and Jake was happy, and so when the news came that they were getting married, Marcus congratulated Jake the next time they spoke, and Jake had invited him to the wedding celebration.

Abby hadn't acknowledged him, but then she was busy with her friends and it was probably better that they ignored each other. Marcus stood off to the side, feeling a little bit out of place. He and Abby hadn't spoken in years, after all, and he didn't expect her to speak with him even now. It was Jake who finally wandered over to strike up a conversation.

"Glad you could make it," Jake said cheerfully, clasping his hand briefly. "How's life in security these days?"

"Same as ever," Marcus replied. "Congratulations. She looks happy."

"Well, I'm a lucky man," Jake replied, with a smile. "You should talk to her. Bury the hatchet."

"That's not going to happen."

Jake chuckled. "That's exactly what she said. Those same words, in fact."

Of course Jake would have tried to get Abby to mend the rift between them. That was just the sort of thing that Jake did that made everyone like him. As much as Marcus appreciated the effort, it was better that Abby stayed away.

"You're both too stubborn," Jake went on, with a chuckle. "You know, she always thought she'd marry _you_."

The words hit him like a punch to the gut, and his first instinct was to deny, deny, deny, because it was ridiculous. Abby had never thought of him that way. That was why he'd pushed her away, because he'd never wanted to be the one spending his life pining for her. Love between them had never been possible... had it?

The world fell around him as it hit him, how incredibly stupid he'd been. And there was absolutely nothing he could do about it other than forget Jake's words and move on.

"You're good for her, Jake," he replied, his eyes finding Abby across the room, laughing at something with Callie.

"Thanks," Jake replied, with his ever-present smile, and he wandered off to chat with someone else while Marcus contemplated going home and drinking himself into a stupor. He hadn't thought that he could hate himself more for hurting Abby, but he was dead wrong.

It never would have worked between them, he reminded himself. They were too similar, and even if Abby had had loved him, she'd never really seen him. She would have had to look up for that, and she was ever-focused on her plans and goals, and had been determined to put him into a slot that she thought he'd fit into, like leading the church or becoming a teacher. And in the end, those were not things he wanted.

Marcus watched her. She was saying something about the dress, smiling as she smoothed the skirt with her hands. It looked gorgeous on her, even if it didn't fit her quite right and had been converted from a jumpsuit. Blue suited her, though, and dresses were hard to come by on the Ark.

Rose Jaha slid up beside him then, linking her arm with his. "Mission accomplished," she said, with a wink.

"Don't talk about that here," he replied. He was half embarrassed about it anyway.

"Why?" Rose teased. "Afraid she'll find out that you care?"

He didn't reply. In truth, he was afraid that she'd misinterpret his actions, especially now with Jake's revelation. Rose was quite happy to take the credit for it, even though it had been him who had traded a month's worth of midday meal rations for the jumpsuit. Rose had been the one to take it to a seamstress down in Factory Station, though, and had been the one to present the dress to Abby as a gift from her and Thelonious.

No, there was no need to know that Marcus had remembered that stupid conversation from when they were fourteen, when she'd said that she wanted to wear a dress when she got married. Had she been picturing him at her side even then? He had no way of knowing because he couldn't ask her now. Maybe he didn't want to know anyway, because if he knew then maybe he'd regret, and then he'd have to figure out what that regret meant.

"There's no room on the Ark for regret," he said aloud.

Rose gave him a pat on the arm and a small smile, one that looked a little sad. "Not to worry. I'll keep your secrets."

And she did, because two years later Rose hemmorhaged after childbirth and died, and his secret died with her. And nothing changed between him and Abby.


	7. Election Day

"Councillor."

She turned and he was there, posture rigid and military, his presence looming over her. Over the years, she'd heard him called every name in the book, but even though he was ruthless and sometimes arrogant, she knew that he was a good leader and did his job to the best of his abilities. Perhaps too well, but that was what had gotten him promoted through the ranks of the guard right up to commander and head of security and elected to the council. She supposed they'd have to find a way to talk now that they were going to be on it together.

"Kane," she replied. She hadn't called him by his name in years. It would have been strange for her to call him Marcus when everyone else called him Councillor Kane.

"Congratulations," he said. "I hear it was a landslide victory."

"So I hear. And thank you."

"I expect you'll do a fine job on the council."

"Really? Didn't I hear that you called me a pain last week?"

He smiled then, an actual smile and not just one corner of his mouth tipping up. "I still voted for you. And anyway, you're the best for the job."

His eyes found hers. She'd long since stopped wondering about what went on behind them, but they'd always seemed to look at her differently than anyone else. It wasn't as if they were darker, but somehow they penetrated her like they saw right inside her.

She wondered why he'd never married. Her youthful feelings for him had long since died away, but the place in her heart for the friend he'd once been hadn't. That had never stopped hurting, though she'd learned not to feel it anymore. The mystery of why he'd cut her from his life had never been solved, and she was too proud to ask him. She didn't think he'd have given her an answer anyway. They were strangers now.

"Thank you," she said. She moved away. His presence was too confusing. She couldn't reconcile the man with the boy she'd known. 

"You're going to have to have productive arguments with him now, you know," Jake said, appearing beside her and slinging an arm around her. "And not just enrage each other."

Jake was always pushing her buttons and laughing about it. It was the reason she'd fallen in love with him so easily: because he knew how to draw her out of her own mind. He reminded her that there was supposed to be laughter in the world, too, which was why she couldn't help a smile now. 

"That was a valid argument," she said, watching Thelonious and Marcus chatting now. "Shumway has narcissistic tendencies and shouldn't have been promoted to Lieutenant."

"It was none of your business."

She decided that changing the subject was the best course of action. "Where did Clarke go?"

"She and Wells ran off," he replied, with a wave of his hand. "These adult sort of affairs are boring for kids."

They were pretty boring for adults, too. "Check up on them, will you?" she asked. 

"They're fine, Abby." Jake looked amused.

"When I was that age, I stole illegal moonshine from my father and almost got arrested for trespassing," she said. She didn't add that she'd made out with her best friend to get away with the crime. "Check up on them."

"As you wish, Councillor Griffin." He gave her a kiss on the cheek and then left. She probably had nothing to worry about, but Clarke was strong-minded and stubborn.

She turned to find Marcus watching her from across the room. Something in his gaze sent a shiver through her, and she decided to dismiss it as the air and nothing more.

He held her gaze for a long moment, and for a second there was almost something between them, a closeness they'd lost a long time ago. But then he straightened his shoulders and his posture became rigid, and it was gone, he was gone, and in his place was Councillor Kane. He turned away, started heading for the door.

There was a pause in his step, brief, but long enough for the tiniest glimmer of hope to bloom in her chest. He'd turn around and walk back to her, and he'd tell her why they'd stopped being friends, why he'd turned cold and shut her out. Maybe then she'd stop missing him, that boy who'd been there by her side for her whole life, who had left a chasm when he'd gone.

None of that happened, though. He walked out, and nothing changed, not even her missing him.


	8. Council Meeting

Marcus couldn't figure out whether he wanted to throttle Abby, or if he wanted to hate-fuck her into oblivion.

Being on the council together was the most time they'd spent together in two decades, and she'd never lost her strong will. He'd always admired that about her, but while trying to solve the problem of the Ark dying it had become mildly infuriating, because now her will had translated to calm opposition. She never rolled her eyes at him, never did anything more than listen to his opposing views and then turn away like she was listening to an idiot.

Except she'd never actually told him that she thought he was an idiot. He could sense it, though. And he was _right_ , goddamn it. Hadn't her husband died so that they could quietly find a solution to the problem? And yet she argued with every solution he presented.

There were times when she did look at him thoughtfully, like he was a puzzle she was trying to solve, and it was those times when he wondered what was going on behind those eyes of hers. What was she thinking about him? And more importantly, why did he care?

He didn't care, he insisted, though lying to himself didn't much help. After all, he'd been denying his feelings for her for years now, and lies had definitely not made that go away. Spending his days mildly infuriated with her seemed to be the best solution, because that way he didn't wonder about her thoughts or check out her ass or watch the way parts of her body did or didn't move when she walked.

She was looking at him in that thoughtful way now, across the council table, and she was only looking at him because she thought he wasn't paying attention, but he was pretending not to notice. When he looked at her, her eyes moved away, back to Jaha, who was once again closing yet another unproductive meeting.

Abby was the first one up, striding out purposefully. Marcus followed her, catching her up halfway to the medical wing.

"Abby," he said. Her back stiffened as she turned to face him.

"Kane," she replied evenly. "I have patients waiting."

He hated that she called him Kane, and logic told him that it shouldn't bother him, because everyone called him Kane. Still, something about it coming from her mouth didn't match with how she viewed him. She acted like she was humouring him, the name sliding from her lips like he'd crowned himself king and she was rolling her eyes behind his back.

"We're fighting for the same thing," he said. "Survival of our species."

"I'm not going to vote to kill innocent people, Kane."

"Even if it's the best solution?"

"Your solution is primitive," she shot back. "It's the easiest way out."

Her eyes flashed with anger and they looked beautiful. She was a pain in the ass and she was driving him crazy.

"You need to stop blocking the council from making progress."

"Make me," she replied evenly.

They stared at each other for a long, loaded moment. He hated when she looked at him like that, like she was waiting for him to crack. He was not going to crack. He was not going to compromise when it came to the survival of their species.

And in the end, he won. He felt her gaze on him when Jaha closed the next council meeting. This time, when he turned his head to meet it, she didn't look away. She was pissed, and he was secretly glad that he'd made her feel something.

"Culling is our best option," Jaha said solemnly. "Now that we've agreed upon that, at our next meeting we will begin discussion on who to cull, and how. Council dismissed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here on our left we can see Marcus and Abby going through their Simon and Paula phase. ;) 
> 
> I hope he doesn't come off as too much of a dick, but I tried to base their characters at this point off how they acted on the show, and he's very cool and logical while she tries not to show emotion around him. (I think his lack of emotion bothers her though.) So I aimed for logic with a side dose of frustration on his part. I figure that in his mind, shutting down his feelings to some extent is the only way he's able to do what needs to be done.
> 
> I am so excited for you guys to read the latter half, you have no idea! :)


	9. The Hundred Project

"We need to pull this off in a way that doesn't make people question why we've changed the rules," Marcus said. "It either has to look like an accident, or we need an explanation."

"Low supplies have always been an issue," Jaha put in. "It's easy enough to use that as reasoning, and nobody will question it. Anyone diagnosed with resource-dependent chronic illness or terminal illness will now have to be executed immediately. No more waiting for death while using up valuable resources."

Abby hated herself, hated the whole conversation. They'd been discussing it for days, how to rapidly decrease the population without causing widespread concern. It was Abby who had suggested the amendment to the chronic and terminal illness clause in the charter, and it made her want to throw up.

"Anyone needlessly taking up resources will also be eliminated," Marcus continued. "It won't be enough, but if we vacate the skybox, we could potentially cut power to the entire prison station itself, which would save-"

"We can't vacate the skybox," Abby interrupted, unable to believe that the words had come from his mouth. _Clarke_.

"Abby-" Jaha began.

She held up a hand to silence him, eyes on Marcus's stony face. "No. They're kids, Kane."

"They're criminals," he replied. "And they're taking up valuable resources."

"They're children," she argued. "If you want to save the human race, then you can't eliminate our children."

"There are plenty of other children on the Ark who aren't criminals."

"They're not all criminals! Some of them were just being kids, making mistakes. Some of them are smart, Kane. They're future doctors and engineers and mechanics. They're valuable!"

"But not fully trained," was his reply. "If this is about your daughter-"

"Clarke," she asserted. "Her name is _Clarke_ , and of course it's about her. That's my daughter, my only child!"

"Enough," Jaha interrupted quietly. "Let's put it to the vote. All in favour of eliminating the hundred juvenile prisoners currently being held in the prison section?"

Cole, Kaplan, Muir, and Fuji of course voted yes along with Marcus. Abby was silently furious, unable to even look at him as Jaha closed the meeting. She strode out before the others, not wanting to make a scene but determined to find another solution. They'd voted to kill her daughter just like they'd voted to kill her husband, and this time she refused to sit back and let it happen.

"Abby," Marcus called. She stopped, turned on her heel and faced him, wishing he would stop following her from meetings to say things that were logical and completely stupid. He looked down at her with a sort of arrogant pity, so stoically regretful even though he had no idea what he'd just done, because he didn't have a child.

"We can't afford to be emotional about this," he said.

"You're not killing my daughter," she told him, and walked away.

Inside her quarters, she silently raged, pacing back and forth and running over the possibilities. She couldn't very well break Clarke out of prison and hide her because there was nowhere to hide, and she'd get caught and they'd both be floated. Abby herself had the possibility of being pardoned by Jaha, but Clarke...

Clarke was going to die either way. That was how it ended in any scenario. Even if she did somehow get them to save the delinquents and reinstate the review process before Clarke's eighteenth birthday, her knowledge about the Ark dying meant that she would die. They'd floated Jake for it, and they would float Clarke, too.

Trying to force back tears, she walked to the window and looked out, hugging herself. Looking at the earth had always calmed her, and it did so now, her eyes finding the colors entrancing. Blue and green and grey and white. And darkness. It was hard to imagine that the orb below moved empty through space, the trees silent but for wind and the ocean turning upon a lonely shore. She'd seen the photographs of the bombs exploding, read the accounts of the end. It was tragic, but mankind had made its own bed. The bombs had only been the last of the destruction wrought upon the earth. Climate change, poverty, tyranny, and war had come long before it, sending cities into the ocean and people into the mountains in a desperate bid to survive.

And all at once, that was when it clicked. She was racing to the communications room before the thought had fully formed, tapping numbers into the computer and looking up historical data on radiation's breakdown and the effects on the human body. She was so busy running simulations that she didn't hear Marcus enter the room.

"Abby," came his voice from behind her, "what are you doing?"

"Just a minute." He approached her anyway, came to a stop by her side, his eyes taking in the data on the screens.

"Chernobyl," she said. "There were animals living there thirty years after the disaster. And trees. We know that trees have regrown in some of the dead zones, so there must be animals as well. We're animals, too, so why couldn't we adapt? We just don't know. There's not enough data. And we've been exposed to radiation in space for decades-"

"Abby. You can't be serious. You can't compare a little accident to those bombs."

He thought she was crazy, but she didn't care, because hope was rising in her chest, and she knew, she just knew that this was the solution. She could send her daughter home. If Clarke stayed on the Ark, she would be executed.

If Clarke got sent to Earth with the other prisoners, she might die of radiation.

_Or_ she would live.

There were no good choices, no good decisions, but Abby was determined to give her daughter her best chance. That chance might be slim, but it was enough for Abby to believe in. Clarke was going to survive. The Earth was survivable; it had to be, and if it was, they could all go home, and there would be no need to reduce the population.

She turned to him. "This could work."

He stepped towards her, right into her personal space, scrutinizing her, and she was immediately infuriated with him for it. If he was trying to intimidate her, it was pointless, because she didn't care about any of his negativity and attitude like he was playing along with a silly game. All he cared about was less people taking up resources. He thought she was an idiot for believing that the Earth was survivable, and he was scoffing at her the same way that he scoffed at his mother's religious teachings that he'd once believed in so much.

Even so, she couldn't bring herself to hate him for it. She still believed that the boy she'd known was in there somewhere, and that she'd see him again before it was all over. She'd been waiting patiently for him to come back for years now, and she didn't believe he was so far gone that he wouldn't.

The door slid open and Jaha strode in. His eyes took in Marcus's invasion of her personal space and then immediately went to the computer screens and the scant data that she'd pulled up. After studying it for a long moment, he turned to them, and that was when she knew she'd won, because she saw that he wanted to hope for the best, too.

"Thelonious," she said, choosing her words carefully. "We don't need to execute the hundred delinquents. We need to send them to the ground."

He looked at the screens again, then at Marcus. "Kane?"

"I concur with Abby," he said, surprising her, but his next words had her annoyed with him all over again. "If we're going to kill a hundred kids, we might as well use them to assess the radiation levels on Earth while we're at it. Either way it buys us enough time to figure out how to cull the population."

"We won't need to cull the population," she said fiercely, "because those kids are going to survive."


	10. Callie and Kane

Marcus rolled away from Callie with a sigh, and they lay there in silence. Closing his eyes, he savoured the few moments of relaxation that came after sex. It was the only time when he could genuinely say that he hadn't a care in the world, that he felt something approximating happiness. It never lasted.

"Tough day?" Callie asked.

"No," he lied.

Callie liked to talk after sex. Usually Marcus stuck to one-word answers, because if he started telling her that he'd spent his afternoon in the council chamber arguing with Abby again and that she was _driving him insane_ , she'd probably not only go and tell Abby, but she'd think he was a sleazebag.

Which probably shouldn't have mattered, because he _was_ a sleazebag. The good thing was, though, that Callie hated herself for it just as much as he did. She thought she was violating some kind of friend code by sleeping with him, because he was Abby's enemy now, or something like it. So everyone thought, anyway.

Callie rolled onto her side, one hand propping her head up. She studied him for a long moment, then reached out and traced a finger along the curve of his pectoral muscle. It tickled a little, and he grabbed her hand and held it to his chest. She really was beautiful, and smart as well, and a part of him wanted to stop keeping her at arm's length.

He didn't want to love her, though. Love was the worst.

"Do you think I don't know what's going on here?" she asked softly.

He looked at the ceiling. He hated it when she did this, tried to pry him open. She thought she knew, but she didn't.

"I mean, the more frustrated you are, the more determined you are to fuck my brains out," she said, shrugging with one shoulder. "I'm okay with that, but maybe you should work on the source of your frustration."

He couldn't work on the source of his frustration, because she had a name. Abby was driving him absolutely insane by constantly blocking him on the council. He'd even agreed with her plan to send the delinquents to Earth (albeit for different reasons) and yet she still countered him every step of the way. The wristbands were being tested and they had decided which dropship to use, but today had been spent arguing over what supplies to stock it with. She wanted to send the kids down with tents and blankets. Seeing as how they were going to drop dead when they landed on the planet, he thought it was a waste to send supplies down with them that were better kept for the real generation that would return to Earth in another hundred years.

"There's a lot at stake here," he replied. "We all want the same thing, but I'm the only one willing to do what needs to be done to save our species."

"Fair enough, but have you ever thought that maybe the others want to exhaust all the other options before going to the extreme?" she asked. "If we don't have to kill hundreds of people, then why should we?"

"But we do. And the more time we spend talking, the more people have to die."

"Abby's just trying to do the right thing, Marcus."

"I know what she's trying to do," he snapped. "You think I don't know how her mind works?"

"No, I don't think you do."

"Because we're not friends anymore."

"Exactly."

Silence fell between them again.

"What happened there, anyway?" Callie asked.

He said nothing. He couldn't tell Callie that he'd shut Abby out of his life to keep himself from falling in love with her, and that despite his best intentions, it had happened anyway.

Abby infuriated him. She drove him absolutely crazy. Those were the things he focused on, because there was no other choice. He couldn't afford to love her. He needed to remain objective and logical until the problem of the Ark dying was solved, and after that... after that she'd hate him for the things he'd have to do.

No, there was no room in his life for loving Abby.

"She's a nightmare," he said. Another lie, but lying to himself was all he had now. "That's what happened."

"Abby has faith," Callie said. "She learned that from you."

The part of him that had faith was buried, maybe dead. He wasn't sure exactly when he'd lost it, but somewhere along the way his mother's preachings of salvation and the ground had turned bitter to his ears. There was no ground for him, no salvation. He would live and die in space, his life never having been his own. His existence was merely transitional, another stepping stone on the road to human survival. And for their species to survive, some of them would have to die. And in order to kill innocent people, there couldn't be any love in his world.

"If she learned it from me," he replied softly, "then I created a monster."


	11. Truce

Marcus was insufferable, and he'd tried to float her and hadn't apologized.

He had tried to float her. _Her_.

Abby hated losing faith in anything, but he was making it extremely difficult. Even with most of the kids still alive on Earth, Marcus insisted on arguing with her about it. He was still pushing for a cull, and Abby had nearly snapped on him this afternoon after yet another disagreement.

At least she had a refuge in the medical wing. That was the one thing she could use to manipulate him. Marcus didn't believe in using supplies unnecessarily, and he wouldn't enter the medical wing and expose himself to illness, because doing so ran the risk of needing treatment, and thus using supplies.

She waved off Jackson when she entered and shut herself in her office, spending several minutes with her head in her hands, trying to calm her anger. There were three sheets of paper on her desk. Test results. Eager for the distraction, she snatched up the first one and scanned it, her frown deepening, because she'd done that on-

Her eyes swept to the top of the page. Callie Cartwig. Her heart fell.

"Goddamn it," she said softly.

Callie had been her best friend since Marcus had deserted their friendship. She and Abby had always been similar in that they were goal-driven, but Callie had always been less intense, more lighthearted. Of all the endings that Callie could have had, this was one that Abby had never envisioned for her.

Letting out a heavy sigh, she climbed to her feet, taking the paper with her. Callie lived in the same wing as her and the rest of the officers on the Ark, but when Abby knocked on her door, and knocked again, there was no answer. Checking the time told her that Callie should have been home, and if she wasn't at home, then she'd be at-

She turned on her heel and headed back down the hallway, and this time her fist was more insistent as it pounded the door. It was a moment or two before Marcus pulled it open, his face immediately turning to annoyance upon seeing her.

"I told you I am done talking about this, Abby," he said. "Don't bother me-"

"I need to speak with Callie."

He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes darting to the paper in her hand and back to her face. Whatever he saw there must have made an impact, because he threw the door open wider for her to enter. She found Callie standing by the window facing away. Abby's eyes took in an empty cup lying on the floor and the tension in Callie's body and determined that they'd been fighting. Turning from the window, Callie's face was splotched with red like she'd scrubbed away tears, and Abby suddenly hated herself for the news she was bringing, because it was going to destroy her friend.

"What is it?" Callie asked, voice flat and hard. Abby held out the paper, finding that her hand was shaking. "Your kidneys are failing. I'm sorry, Cece."

Callie's face didn't change as her eyes moved over the words once, and then twice. "Kidney failure," she said hollowly. Her shoulders slumped, and something died in her eyes. Wordlessly, she thrust the paper at Marcus, whose face was inscrutable as he read it.

"Callie-" he said, but she cut him off.

"Don't you dare," she snapped, tears in her eyes. "Don't you dare say a goddamned word, Marcus. You're not going to fight this for me, because you follow the rules, and I don't want to hear you not fighting it. Maybe you could at least pretend to care now that it's me you have to float now instead of Abby-"

She broke down then, and Abby put her arms around her friend, blinking back her own tears. As Callie sobbed into her shoulder, her eyes found Marcus, who for once looked lost, standing by with the test results in his hand. He wasn't crying, though, probably because he'd locked his feelings away a long time ago and he knew perfectly well that the rules had changed and that Callie would be floated immediately and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Still, Callie was right. She wished he could have pretended, just this once.

He was stone-faced when they took her to the airlock the next afternoon. Callie had put on a brave face, and it killed Abby to see it. Marcus stood by in stiff military pose, ready to give the order to kill his girlfriend. Whatever had been resolved or said between him and Callie had clearly been done in the hours since her diagnosis, because they spoke not a word to each other. He didn't even look at her.

With the push of a button, Callie was gone.

Marcus turned to leave immediately, and something inside Abby broke open.

"You could have faked it, Kane," she snapped. "You could have pretended to give a damn about her."

He said nothing, just walked out, and she went back to the medical wing until Jackson laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and sent her home.

She broke down there, with huge, wrenching sobs that tore from her chest uncontrollably while she sat on the floor of her living room, her back against the couch. She told herself that she'd only allow herself fifteen minutes to break down, but after twenty minutes she extended it to thirty, and then gave up and decided that she didn't give a crap who saw her puffy eyes the next day.

Her friend had gone peacefully, braver than she should have been. It brought back memories of her mother's floatation, the easy smile she'd given right before the end. She hadn't thought about it in years. Her mother had been ready to go, though, whereas Callie... Callie's only comfort was that she was saving someone else from being culled.

There was a knock on the door. Abby ignored it, wiping at her face and then deciding that she didn't give a shit who saw her like this. The knock came again, more insistent this time, and she turned her head and glared at the door.

"Enter," she called.

Marcus was the last person she wanted to see at the moment, but he was inside and walking towards her before she could order him out.

"What do you want?" she demanded. She was not in the mood for his snide remarks and humouring smiles and superiority complex. She was half tempted to slap him, but figured he'd call it assault and try to float her for it (again), so she settled for a glare.

He sat down beside her with a heavy sigh. As offended as she was at his presence, if he didn't open his mouth and start spewing logic about saving the human race and killing people for the greater good, maybe, just _maybe_ she could tolerate him. For old time's sake.

"I was thinking about your mother," he said, pulling out a flask and offering it to her. "Truce, for one evening?"

He still cared. For all his arrogance and arguing and scoffing at her faith in the hundred project, he still remembered the day her mother had died and knew she'd be thinking about it after Callie's death. Maybe he didn't want to be alone, either. Maybe he had felt something for Callie after all.

"Shut up," she said, snatching the offered flask and taking a long drink. She was not much for drinking, but the burn of the alcohol was comforting, and so she took another.

Silently, they passed the flask back and forth until it was empty and he tucked it away in his pocket again. She cried again, and once she thought he was going to reach for her, but his hand withdrew before it had moved an inch. It was just so, because she wasn't sure she wouldn't have slapped it away.

There were many things she could have said but didn't. She wanted to ask what happened to the boy who had been her friend, what had made him so cold. She wanted to tell him that she was alone, because Jake was dead and Clarke was gone, and now Callie was gone, too, and despite everything he was the only one she had left who really knew her, or had at least. She had other friends, of course –Jackson and Thelonious- but they didn't know her the way the others had. The way Marcus did.

And she wanted to tell him that she'd seen the look on his face when he'd nodded for the button to be pushed that would have ejected her from the airlock and killed her. That she knew that he thought he was doing the right thing by following the law, but it still would have haunted him. She wanted to ask him if this was his way of saying sorry. She said nothing, though, and it was better that way, because that would have been the alcohol talking. Or so she told herself.

After awhile the tears stopped, and she tipped her head back and closed her eyes, the alcohol having made her drowsy as well. She must have fallen asleep, because sometime later she woke on the couch with a blanket tucked around her, and she actually smiled before she remembered everything that had transpired that day. He was gone, of course, and for a moment she wondered if he'd even been there, if it had all been a hallucination. But his scent lingered in the room and she knew he'd really been there.

The next day, when their truce was over and they were back to butting heads, she pretended that she really had dreamed it. It was easier that way. He wasn't the only one who could bury his feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fasten your seatbelts, ladies and gentlemen, because now the fun begins. ;)


	12. Marcus

Safe. She was safe now, with her head resting on his shoulder and his arm around her. 

Everything they'd ever said, and never said, had been running through the back of his mind since the mutiny. It was easy to focus on whatever was at hand, on finding others and getting to safety. Duty had to come first, and so he'd gotten the survivors to safety, and had rescued Jaha, and it wasn't until Wick had mentioned the possibility of survivors in one of the service bays that Abby's fate had come crashing back.

She could have been happily walking around on Earth with Diana and the others for all he knew, but if there was any possibility of her being trapped somewhere on the Ark, he would find her. He owed her that much after everything he'd done.

Nobody hated themselves more than him. He'd killed three hundred and twenty of his people, and the guilt of that rested heavily on his heart. So long as he lived, he would never be able to forgive himself for it. He didn't deserve anyone's forgiveness, ever.

Except Abby had forgiven him. He'd blocked her every move and he'd tried to float her and at the end of all of that, the sound of his name had rolled from her lips after all these years. Marcus. She was too good for him, and if she saw something in him that he thought he'd lost a long time ago, then he would spend every moment from now on making it up to her somehow.

If he could get her out of the service bay alive, anyway. 

"Are you really here?" she mumbled, lifting her head a little and squinting at him.

"I said I'd never leave you," he replied. Maybe he really was working with ten percent of his brain, because it was a stupid thing to say. Next he'd be confessing all of his secrets, the likely result of which would probably send her running through the maintenance shaft away from him.

He should really get up and start getting them all moving. They'd all have to crawl back through the shaft, a feat which was going to be extremely difficult given their condition. The last thing he needed was people passing out on the way back. Maybe he'd be able to hail Wick on the intercom and see if they could somehow temporarily redirect power to the coolant system.

"Get up," he told her. "We need to get moving."

"We have to tell the kids... not to trust Diana."

He didn't have the heart to tell her that communication with the kids was impossible now, and that she probably wouldn't speak to her daughter ever again. He was done crushing her dreams.

"Get up," he told her again, this time rising to his own feet and hauling her up with him. "Get these people moving. I'll be right back."

A quick search found nothing useful, and reattaching the battery pack to the intercom proved futile, as the one on the other end was dead. He was going to have to send everyone back through the shaft and hope for the best. Maybe it would be more tolerable with the hatches off on either end.

Returning, he found Abby and the others on their feet, all looking at him expectantly. Her eyes met his.

"We need to crawl back through the maintenance shaft," he told them. "There is no power to the coolant system, so it's very hot in there, and it's going to be very difficult."

"Come on," Abby said. She still looked like she might pass out, but somehow led the others to the shaft, encouraging them as they crawled in. She always had been a better motivator than him. When the sixth one was gone and it was just the two of them left, she looked at him.

"You can do this," he told her.

She reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it quickly and then dropping it. "Marcus, thank you."

She was still calling him Marcus.


	13. Unwilling

"I need you to be Chancellor."

He was going after her girl. Abby had a vague list of things in her head that she was unwilling to do, and giving up Marcus was on it. She didn't want to let him disappear into the hands of the grounders, because she had an awful feeling that he wouldn't come back. Why else would he ask her to be Chancellor?

If he didn't come back, she wasn't sure she could handle it.

Reaching out, he picked up the pin again. He always stood too close to her, and now was no exception. Lifting aside her hair, he gently inserted the pin through the fabric of her jacket's lapel, securing it there. His hand lingered, and his eyes flicked up to hers, and then briefly down to her lips. If he'd kissed her, she wouldn't have stopped it, but he didn't. He simply lifted her hair back into place and then dropped his hand.

She was good at hiding her feelings. She'd kept them buried on the Ark, kept secret from the cold and logical Marcus that had acted so dismissive towards her. It was only when she'd started seeing the cracks in his facade after Vera's death that they'd begun to overwhelm her. Hope was painful after so long, and she hadn't wanted to believe that the real him was coming back to her.

But he had. He'd appeared in front of her in that hot as hell service bay and she'd thought she was hallucinating him there, smiling at her and putting his arm around her. It had been real, though. He'd come for her in the end.

_I said I'd never leave you._

But he'd tried to again, when the launch had failed and he'd gotten up to stay behind. After all these years her first instinct had been to stop him, her body reacting before her mind, her arm reaching out to draw him back before he'd even moved away. And he'd looked at her like he'd expected it.

And now here he was, leaving her again.

"Okay," she said, the word coming out softer that she'd intended.

His eyes were still searching her face like he was trying to memorize it. When he looked at her like that, it made her want to stop thinking altogether and let a million foolish thoughts tumble from her lips. So she turned away, wincing at the pain radiating through her back as she did. She placed her hands upon the table, bracing herself until it died down to a dull throb again.

And then jumped as something cool grazed her back.

She closed her eyes, pretending he wasn't there, that he wasn't lifting aside the two halves of her shirt to look at what he'd done. Even though she couldn't see his face, she knew what it looked like. The look of a man punishing the woman he loved was unmistakable, as was the look of one who was sorry for it.

God, how she loved him.

He was her weakness. He always had been. Abby was strong-willed... except when it came to Marcus Kane. Back when they were teenagers, she'd been so afraid that her feelings for him were unrequited that she hadn't dared risk losing him. And then Jake had come into her life, and she'd lost him anyway.

The coolness of his fingers grazing her back felt good against the pain. He didn't touch the wounds, but skirted the edges feather-lightly and then abruptly withdrew his touch. She didn't turn around, because she didn't want him to see that she would have done anything for him in that moment, and she couldn't speak because she was afraid she'd tell him not to leave.

"I have to go," he said quietly.

He was struggling to do the right thing, and that, in the end, was why she had to let him go. It was the only way he'd come back. Turning her head to the side, she nodded, and after he withdrew, she stood there for a long while, letting the gravity of her new position settle firmly onto her shoulders. She was Chancellor now.

She watched him disappear into the forest awhile later, silently terrified that it was the last time she would see him.

"Come back to me," she quietly told the trees, and with one last look at the forest, turned away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I need to take a moment to talk about the thing that inspired this entire story. So I was doing a rewatch, and in the scene where their launch fails and he's ready to sacrifice himself, her immediate knee-jerk reaction is to throw out a hand and physically stop him. This is the man who tried to block her every move and even tried to float her. And suddenly when everything goes to hell, she's calling him Marcus and forgiven him and is completely unwilling to let him go. And I was like... WHY? I mean, there could be any number of reasons for such a dramatic turnaround in their relationship, but I just had to write a backstory for them. And they way they can communicate just by looking at each other, like in the scene where they're asking Diana where she was, and the scene where he shocklashes her. You don't just develop that overnight. That's the sort of thing that screams deep connection, and that these are two people who have known each other very well for many years.


	14. Surgery

"Take off your pants."

Marcus was lying on a table in a makeshift surgical tent on the outskirts of Tondc –or what was left of it anyway- and the order struck him as funny. Abby shot him a stern look as he chuckled. He was covered in dust, had lost too much blood, had a slight concussion and was probably going to die, but at least he'd die having a laugh first.

"Marcus, I'm serious. Take off your damned pants."

Nyko had given him some kind of primitive clotting agent, which Abby apparently found satisfactory, because the bleeding from the cut to his leg had slowed. He wasn't particularly looking forward to surgery without anesthesia, but they couldn't leave the tourniquet on forever, and he was in good hands. Abby's hands. 

"What about the tourniquet?" he asked.

"Let me worry about the tourniquet," she replied, then looked at him pointedly.

There was something very satisfying about being ordered around by her, but even so, his hands were unsteady as he reached down to unbutton his pants, which shouldn't have been surprising given that he'd spent half the day under a pile of rubble and he had a massive headache on top of feeling dazed. After fumbling with the button, he found that the zipper was beyond him, and it got stuck halfway down. 

With a sigh, Abby batted his hands away and started fiddling with the damned thing, which did nothing for his meandering thoughts except to send them to imagining her taking off his pants under entirely different circumstances.

And of course she couldn't get the damned zipper down, either. 

"You could try your teeth," he said, the words slipping out before he'd even registered he was thinking them. A chuckle followed. She paused, casting him a glance before returning to the task at hand. When she finally had the zipper down and his pants over his hips and was transferring the tourniquet to his bare leg, he was starting to see little lights floating around the room and was feeling very, very strange.

Her hand was on his bare leg now as she examined the wound, and he tried not to think about how nice it felt. Or that he was laying there in his underwear on a table in front of her. It was both a place he'd always wanted to be and a place he'd never wanted to be all at once. Silently, he thanked the befuddled state of his mind for keeping his thoughts on... butterflies around Abby's head.

"I think I see butterflies around your head," he told her. They were pretty. "Should I be concerned about that?"

With a frown, she approached, scrutinizing him for a long moment, checking his pupils and feeling his forehead for fever. "How hard did you hit your head?" she demanded.

Nyko appeared in the doorway of the tent just then, carrying a basket of medical supplies. Abby immediately turned to him, hand on hip. Marcus knew that look. It meant nothing good.

"Nyko, did you give him anything else besides that coagulant?"

Nyko's gaze moved to Marcus on the table, then slid back to Abby. "I added jobi nut oil, to ease his mind."

Marcus wasn't sure what jobi nut oil was, but he did know that he felt way too good for the circumstances. There were butterflies around Nyko's head now, too, but they were green in contrast to the pink ones around Abby's head.

"Hallucinogenic?"

Nyko nodded, then passed her the basket and left the tent. Abby spent a moment looking through it, then plucked a few things out and set it aside before approaching him again.

"Marcus, I'm going to have to tie you down," she said.

That sounded pretty darned good to him. Not that he was really into that sort of thing, but he'd do anything for Abby. 

"Yes, m'am," he found himself saying. "Abby, you're so beautiful."

She didn't respond to that, but turned away, fiddling with the strap in her hand, and as he studied her back, little flashes began to appear. Fascinated, he watched them spin and them solidify into wounds from when he'd had her shocklashed, glaring red against the dust and blue of her jacket.

"I wanted to kiss those better."

She cast him an amused glance over her shoulder. "Should I gag you for your own good?"

"Anything."

That earned him a small smile as she busied herself with strapping him down and then cleaning his leg. Whatever she was using hurt like hell when she poured it onto the wound, but it was nothing compared to when she started cutting into him. The butterflies around her head turned to flames, which at first he found fascinating and then terrifying. Then at some point it was over, his throat was raw from yelling, his leg throbbing and his body weary. He fell asleep.

He woke in the dark sometime later with his leg hurting like hell. There were no butterflies anymore and he could feel every bruise on his body. The tent was dimly lit with a candle, and on the outer reaches of the light Abby lay sleeping, her head pillowed on her arms and a blanket slipping off her. She'd taken the straps off his upper body, but not his hips or the leg she'd operated on. He had a blanket thrown over him, which he pushed aside.

When he propped himself up on an elbow to undo the strap over his hips, she stirred and woke. She must have been as exhausted from the day as he was, but she was up and at his side before he could tell her to stay, checking him for fever and helping him with the rest. His mind still felt a little foggy, but his headache had eased some. 

"How do you feel?" she asked, checking the bandage on his leg.

"Like hell." Laying on a wooden table wasn't helping much.

"No more butterflies?"

He smiled. "No."

"You should keep resting."

"I will. Just get me off this damned table."

The tent had been set up on the forest floor, and as such, the ground was much more comfortable to lay on. Abby wouldn't let him put his pants on, but she did have another blanket to put between him and the cold ground. Once he was settled, she went back to her spot and wrapped herself in her own blanket. Weary, he closed his eyes, and then opened them again. Maybe the jobi nut oil hadn't completely worn off, or maybe it was just that the dark made him want to confess all his secrets, but there was one more thing he wanted to say before she fell asleep again.

"Abby?"

"Hmm?"

"You're my salvation."

He couldn't see her face from his angle, but he was sure she smiled. "Go to sleep, Marcus," she said. "And try not to get buried under any rubble tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wanted a write a scene that took place between the Tondc bombing and Mt. Weather, and originally was going to write them getting ambushed by the mountain men but then I had this idea, and then I had a good giggle over it, and one thing led to another, as they do. It's probably a little out of character but hey, anything can happen on jobi nuts and I can totally picture Marcus saying stupid romantic shit while high and Abby being so done with him but also secretly loving it.
> 
> Also shout out to abbyskane on Tumblr for her post about Abby being his salvation, which inspired his last line. :)


	15. The Kiss

It was raining. When it started, Abby had stood out in it for a moment, letting it fall upon her skin. After growing up on the Ark, where water was precious and rationed, having it fall from the sky in such abundance seemed like a miracle. It chilled her, though, and that was when she'd withdrawn into the station, her heart growing suddenly heavy.

The roof was leaking in one of the corridors. She paused there, watching the rivulets of water seep from the ceiling and run down the wall. Reaching out, she touched one, catching a drop on her finger and bringing it to her lips.

"Hey."

Marcus was there, the shoulders of his jacket wet from where the rain had fallen onto it. There were droplets caught in his hair, too.

"There's a leak," she said.

"I'll let Sinclair know. Abby-"

They fell silent as Raven came into view, limping down the corridor. She nodded a greeting as she passed by, and said something under her breath. Abby didn't quite catch all of it, but did hear _Kane all up in your personal space_ , and pretended she didn't.

Another rivulet ran down the wall. Abby felt tears spring to her eyes. It was with confidence that she could say they would not spill over, because she would not allow it. Breaking down was for private. Still, a tear formed and slipped down her cheek anyway, and it was then that she realized that her worry for Clarke had pushed her there. She couldn't get the image of her little girl alone out in the rain out of her head.

A hand gently cupped her cheek, the thumb swiping away the tear. Her eyes moved to Marcus, who indeed was _all up in her personal space_ , as Raven had put it. She'd never minded it, not since they'd landed on Earth. There was too much space on the ground, and sometimes she found herself longing for the enclosure of the Ark. Confinement felt like home to her, and his presence next to her was comforting.

He kept his hand there, cupping her cheek, his expression saying that he was sorry for her pain. That was the thing about Marcus's eyes: they gave away every single one of his thoughts. She'd lost herself in his glances time and time again, and this time was no different.

His movement toward her was slow, and she could see his intention there but could also see that he was giving her the option to turn away, to keep control of the line they hadn't yet crossed. But she didn't, and as his lips grazed hers and the line crumbled, she realized how much she'd needed this. She'd been clinging to him so hard because she'd lost everyone else, even Clarke, and he was the only one she had left now, and she needed someone whose arms she could fall apart in.

The kiss was surprisingly gentle, and oh so different than the one they'd shared at fifteen. Not hesitant, but tender. Marcus had been all cold and logic for so long that she'd expected a kiss from him to be hard and unyielding, not this sweet, yearning thing that broke open everything inside her.

Pulling back, he rested his forehead against hers momentarily, but she wanted more. She tried to mimic his tenderness, but nothing she had ever done had come out gentle. Her lips were terrible at hiding her feelings, and her feelings said that she wanted to sink into him, to tear him open and learn all his secrets.

A throat cleared nearby. They turned as one to see Bellamy there, not looking the least bit surprised or sorry for the interruption.

"The emissary from the ice nation is here," he said.

She let out a heavy breath. Marcus's hand had dropped to her waist, but he hadn't backed away.

"We'll meet you in the council chamber," she said. Bellamy nodded and was gone, and Abby sighed and turned back to Marcus, who was looking down at her with that half-smile of his.

"I've wanted to kiss you again since we were fifteen," he said.

In response, she took his hand and tugged him towards the council room. "Come on. We've got alliances to discuss."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll post the last three chapters tomorrow. Just have to proofread them. :)


	16. The Why

He was done for. 

Marcus had always taken pride in being logical, but he'd thrown all of that to the wind when he'd kissed Abby. It hadn't been a planned moment. Well... it had been in his mind, of course, and he had felt completely ridiculous to be so nervous about it at his age. 

In the mountain, he'd been faced with the possibility of losing her, for real this time, and it had terrified him. He'd never felt so utterly helpless as when she'd been strapped to that table with a monster drilling into her leg. When it was all over, and he was walking back to camp with her hand securely in his, that was when he knew it was time to quit being a coward. 

And goddamn, kissing her had felt so right.

There was so much else to deal with, though. After the grounders had left them to die, after Clarke had left, there had come word of broken alliances amongst the grounder clans themselves. When the grounders had discovered that the Sky People had killed everyone in the mountain, and on top of that had cured the reapers, tales of the great warrior Clarke had spread far and wide, and every grounder clan wanted them for their ally.

And neither Marcus nor Abby had any idea which to choose, if any. Even with Bellamy on the council, it was still overwhelming. The meeting with the ice nation had gone sour when Abby had refused to commit to an alliance, and the pressure was on.

It was definitely not the time to be kissing Abby... but then again, when was a good time? They couldn't very well put their lives on hold forever. War could come again next week, and then what?

"Marcus?"

He realized he'd been staring blankly at the sheet in front of him, marked with pros and cons to each alliance. Abby was there in the doorway of the council room, watching him. The pressure was getting to her, or at least that was what he hoped, as she'd been a little distant since the kiss. 

He gestured to the sheet. "I was just going over-"

"Why did you do it?" she asked, cutting him off. "Why did you push me away?"

That question was one he hadn't been expecting, and he couldn't figure out how to answer her properly. She seemed to take his silence for an answer, though, and after looking at him for a long moment, turned and walked away. He let her go, sifting through his thoughts, unable to untangle them in time enough to follow.

He found her in the medical tent a half hour later, sorting through supplies.

"Abby," he said.

She looked at him. Waited.

He was going to say it, and damn the consequences. Not saying it had gotten him nowhere.

"I did it because I didn't want to fall in love with you."

It clearly hadn't been the answer that she'd been expecting. He noted the change in her face, the slight widening of her eyes and the softening of the muscles around her mouth.

"You hurt me, Marcus," she said. 

He stepped toward her, praying that he was doing this right. "I know," he replied, looking down at her. "And it was pointless, because it happened anyway."

"You love me." She stated it so factually and he wasn't sure that was a good sign.

"I love you."

Suddenly she was flustered, her cheeks reddening and a frown creasing her brow. Her eyes were bright when she looked at him, though, and she reached up and grabbed hold of his jacket collar, and he reached out and cupped her cheek-

And Wick walked into the medical tent.

Marcus wanted to kill him.

"Uh, yeah," Wick said, eyebrows raising. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "One of the hunters got shot in the arm. They think it was Emerson again. They're bringing him in now."

"Thank you, Wick," Abby said.

Wick nodded, and turned to leave, then turned back and gave them a thumbs-up. "Nice timing, by the way. Sinclair owes me two meat rations and he's going to be pissed."

With that, he was gone, and Marcus couldn't believe his ears. "Were they taking bets on us?"

Abby dropped her hands from his collar, already readying her table for her patient. He took that as his cue to leave, but just as he was about to duck through the doorway, she called his name.

He looked over his shoulder to find her smiling at him.

"I love you, too," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on if my leaders stared at each other like that, I'd start a betting pool.


	17. Self-Defence

Emerson was attacking people in the forest, the grounder clans were at war with each other, and the only thing preventing them from being at war with the Sky People was an alliance that Abby and the others couldn't decide upon. 

And the roof was leaking again. Being Chancellor was a nightmare.

"Can you fix it?" she asked Raven. A storm had knocked out the antenna last night, a day after they'd finally made contact with survivors from Tesla Station, sixty-odd miles away.

"No problem," Raven replied easily. "I'll get Kyle on it."

"Thank you." It came out harsher than she'd intended, though, enough so that Raven's eyebrows went up.

"Everything all right there, Chancellor?" the girl asked.

"It's fine," Abby replied tersely, turning to leave. But it wasn't fine. She needed a strategy, and she wasn't a strategist. A goal she could obtain and work with, but choosing the right grounder alliance? She needed Clarke for that, and Clarke was who-knows-where, maybe even dead. The weather had turned cold, and she was out there alone...

"Don't take this the wrong way," Raven said, her voice a little too casual, "but maybe you just need to relax. You know... find a way to work off some of that tension."

Abby shot Raven a look that would have sent anyone else running for cover, but the girl only shrugged and turned away, smirking. Raven, she decided, was a complete pain in the ass. Irritated, Abby strode from the room, and halfway down the hallway realized that maybe the girl had a point. She did need something.

Marcus was in the yard, checking up on the construction of the aquaponics system. Standing with hands behind his back, his posture was rigid, but like always, everything about him seemed to soften when he saw her. 

"Are you busy?" she asked. "I need you to help me with something."

"Of course," he replied, and promptly followed her back toward the station. They would need somewhere private for this, and so she led him to the empty council room and then turned to him and took a deep breath.

"I need you to teach me self-defence," she said.

He surveyed her for a long moment, a smile playing on his lips. His eyes drifted down her body and back up like he was sizing her up. It made her warm all over, and half of her wanted to run from the room while the other half wanted to throw herself at him. Abby was strong-willed, but when it came to Marcus Kane, she was a lovesick fool.

"You don't need to be a warrior, Abby," he said. "You're a leader and a healer. Isn't that good enough?"

"It was good enough on the Ark, but not on the ground," she replied. "You heard those stories that the ice nation told us about Clarke. They think she's some kind of great warrior, and here I am, unable to even pick the right clan to ally with-"

"It's not an easy decision, Abby." His voice was gentle. "We'll go over all the costs and benefits, short term and long term, and we'll-"

"I don't want to talk about that," she interrupted. "Marcus, you need to teach me something. Anything. What happened in the mountain... I never want to be helpless again."

He looked at her for a long moment. "Octavia would probably be a better teacher."

"I want you."

With those words, the air between them seemed suddenly thick. Without another word, he stepped towards her, and in one quick motion, grabbed her arm and spun her around, pinning her against his chest, one arm behind her back.

And that was when she realized that she'd made a huge mistake.

"So," he said, voice steady but low, "if your opponent has your arms pinned, you have two options: your head and your feet. You'll want to maximize the damage to your opponent in order to free yourself. Which means you'll want to aim for causing the most pain and debilitation. Nose, eyes, ears, neck, knees, shins, and groin. You want to make him hurt."

She could feel his heart thudding against her back, and the weak sensation in her legs and shortness of breath had nothing to do with being restrained and everything to do with the physical contact sending her toward her breaking point. She felt her resolve crumble, just a little, and futilely told herself that she was too old to be lusting after the likes of Marcus Kane, to be so completely and utterly desperate to be his in every way.

She threw her full weight back against him, catching him off-guard. She tried to stomp on his foot and missed, tried to throw her head back and hit his face, but only succeeded in connecting her skull with his chin. He stumbled backwards and freed her one arm, though, and as hard as she could, she thrust it back, elbowing him in the ribcage and sending a jolt down the bone all the way to her fingers. He let her go then and she leapt away, pleased with herself until she heard him laughing.

He was half bent over, one hand rubbing the spot where she'd elbowed him. "Nice start... we need to work on your technique."

"Teach me how to shoot a gun," she demanded.

He grinned at her, straightening up and stepping towards her again. "No guns, and no knives. Not yet. Now-"

He moved so quickly, grabbing her by the wrists and shoving her back against the wall, pinning her hands above her head. They were both breathing heavily now, and he was too close, the air between them on fire.

"I did that wrong," he breathed. "I should have you pinned the other way."

Her mind was all over the place, Raven's words crashing through her mind, and she was so drunk on his proximity that she could barely think straight.

"Now what?" she asked, her words coming out breathless.

"Now is when you'd go for the groin," he said. His eyes were on hers, and in one smooth movement, he pressed forward, his body now fully against hers, the weight of it pinning her to the wall. "And now you can't. So-"

She kissed him, every bit of stubborn resistance falling away, leaving only the desire to burn away the heady tension between them. He kissed her back with equal passion, like it was the end of the world and she was his salvation. She squirmed against him, her hips pressing against his, and he abruptly let go of her wrists, his hands tangling in her hair instead, while hers reached between them and unfastened his pants.

"When I said go for the groin," he said, as her teeth nipped at his neck, "that's not what I meant."

"Too bad," she replied, because he knew perfectly well she was stubborn, and she wanted him so badly that she could hardly stand it.

"Abby-"

He lifted her up, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. Still kissing, he carried her into a small communications room that was useless now that they were on the ground, and unused. Their clothes fell to the floor, and then them as well, and then he was on her and inside her, and everything slowed down. It was everything and nothing she had imagined.

"Are your hands shaking?" she asked. He was running them all over her body like he wanted to memorize it.

"No," he said, a little breathlessly. "Yes."

She grabbed hold of one of them and held it against her chest where he could feel her racing heartbeat. A light chuckle escaped him, and then she laughed too, and then they were making love to each other, all tangled limbs and light touches and lips, and afterward she lay with her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat slow.

"Abby?" He said her name softly. Lazily.

"What?" Her heart started pounding again, even now afraid that she'd lost him.

"I should have taught you self-defence years ago."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not gonna lie, I grin and giggle like an idiot every time I reread this chapter because CAN. YOU. IMAGINE.
> 
> Inspired by just not liking the way those mountain men manhandled Abby onto the table. I thought it would be cool if she learned self-defence, and who better to teach her? ;)


	18. Clarke

Abby's face was peaceful in sleep for the first time in weeks. It was early dawn and the sounds of the camp waking began to drift into their tent from outside, but even so Marcus didn't have the heart to wake her. He leaned forward and kissed her shoulder lightly, then pulled her back tighter against him, savouring the moment. The air around them was cool and damp, but pressed together it was warm.

Clarke had arrived back last night after a two week search. When word had come after dark of movement by the treeline, Marcus had rushed to the gate with Abby to see her come home, hand in hand with Bellamy. 

Abby had felt guilty for sending Bellamy to bring her back, Marcus knew, but any fears of resentment had vanished with the peaceful expression on Clarke's face. She and Abby had talked long into the night about herbs and medicines and the things Clarke had learned from the healers in Polis. When Abby had finally come to bed, it had been with her own content smile.

Abby stirred, stretching ever so slightly. Having her in his arms felt so fantastic that he wished she'd been there years ago. He was never letting her go.

"Good morning," she murmured. He loved the sound of her voice in the morning, low and sleepy. It was even better when it turned to low moans and sighs.

"Happy?" he asked. He put his lips to her shoulder again, and she smiled.

"Very. She seems content."

"Do you think she'll be okay with us?"

She shrugged her shoulder lightly. "With Clarke, who knows? Did you see that she and Bellamy were holding hands?" 

"He'll make a good son-in-law," he teased.

"Hey, let's not go crazy. He could decide to turn around and ignore her for twenty years."

"Very funny, Abby."

She wiggled around to face him, putting a hand on his cheek and leaning forward and kissing him lightly. He deepened the kiss, moving to her jawline and then down her neck. Her hands ran over his shoulders and down his back and she sighed in that way he found so delightful and arched her back as he kissed his way down her body. He never tired of making love to her. It was something completely different to be inside the woman that he loved, like the whole universe was there between them and they were falling into it. 

Afterward she curled against him and they dozed, waking later when the sounds of the camp became noisier. They were probably setting a terrible example as leaders by lingering in bed, but at the moment he didn't care.

There came the crunch of footsteps moving closer. Abby lifted her head.

"Mom?" Clarke's voice called from outside the tent. 

The day had begun, whether they liked it or not.

"Just a minute, Clarke." With that, they were both up, snatching up their clothes and hastily pulling them on. He felt like a delinquent and shot her a grin, and was rewarded with a grin in return. They were co-conspirators again.

"Mom." Clarke's voice was more insistent now. "Just to make this a little less awkward, I know who's in there."

"Oh, hell." Abby tugged on her shirt and began arranging her hair. "Come in, then."

Clarke barged in, and Marcus steeled himself for a tirade, but instead all he got was a narrow look before her attention focused on Abby. He briefly entertained trying to look like he was there on official business to diffuse some of the awkwardness, but there was nowhere to sit but on their bed, and so he settled for avoiding eye contact by putting on his boots and hoping for the best.

"What is it?" Abby asked, lacing her own boots. Clarke grabbed up her jacket and tossed it to her.

"The survivors from Tesla Station are here, and they've got some weird drone thing with them. I sent them over to grab some breakfast but we should definitely have a meeting."

"Okay." Abby briefly turned back to give Marcus a peck on the cheek before ducking out ahead of her daughter. He was secretly pleased that she wasn't bothering to hide anything, but Clarke paused by the door, shooting him another narrow look.

"I'm not calling you Dad," she told him. "And if you hurt my mom, I'll run you through with a grounder sword."

"Deal," he replied, and grinned.

With that, she was gone, and he chuckled, scrubbing a hand over his face. He hadn't realized how much he'd been worrying about Clarke's approval, but now that he had it, there was a sense of relief. And happiness. Abby was his.

"So?" he heard Clarke inquire, outside. "What is up with you and Kane?"

"Let's go have a drink," Abby replied, her voice fading as they moved away. "I want to tell you a story."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap, folks! Thank you all for reading and for your wonderful comments. They honestly make my day and I love you all so much. And not to worry, I'll be writing more. :) I just love these two idiots so much.


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